Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/202

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revolt was not fully suppressed till the seventh year (498).[1] In the fourth year of the war, however, the ringleaders were captured and decapitated, and their heads were sent to Constantinople, where they were exhibited to the populace fixed on poles in the suburb of Sycae.[2] The pacification of the province was achieved by this war more effectually than on any previous occasion, and the Isaurians do not again appear in history as refractory subjects of the Empire.[3]

2. In 502 the Persian king, Cavades,[4] applied to Anastasius for the loan of a large sum of money which he required in order to cement an alliance with the barbarian nation of the Nephthalites or White Huns.[5] For politic reasons this loan was refused, and the exasperated potentate immediately turned his arms against the Empire. He invaded the western portion of Armenia, which was under Roman suzerainty,[6] and took one or two towns of minor importance before an army could be sent against him. The principal feature of this war, which lasted about four years, was the capture and recovery

  1. Marcellinus Com., an. 498.
  2. This was the end of the war according to Theophanes (an. 5988), who gives it only three years; cf. Jn. Malala, xvi.
  3. These brigands had been subsidized to the amount of 5,000 lb. of gold annually (Jn. Antioch., Müller, v, p. 30, says only 1,500 lb.), which was henceforth saved to the treasury; Evagrius, iii, 35. All the most troublesome characters were captured and settled permanently in Thrace; Procopius, Gaz. Paneg., 10. For a monograph on this war see Brooks, Eng. Hist. Rev., 1893.
  4. Kavádh in recent transliteration. Persian history has been greatly advanced by modern Orientalists; see especially Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser, Leyden, 1887. But the history of Tabari is absurdly wrong in nearly all statements respecting the Romans and the translations of Nöldeke and Zotenberg vary so much that we often seem to be reading different works.
  5. Theodore Lect., ii; Procopius, De Bel. Pers., i, 7, et seq.; De Aedific., iii, 2, et seq.
  6. Ibid.; De Bel. Pers., ii, 3.